As fiscal pressures lead to cutbacks in the public sector, says Lewis M. Andrews, organized religious groups are stepping into the void:
As much as America has suffered since the start of the financial crisis in 2007, there is no doubt that for many the situation is about to get worse. The unfortunate consequence of reductions needed to balance state and local budgets, worries Orin Kramer, former chairman of New Jersey’s public pension fund, “Is that various safety nets for the most vulnerable citizens will be cut back.” If there is a silver lining, it is the opportunity to restructure many services that, while well intended, are not the most effective use of taxpayer dollars.
One interesting question that so far has received little attention is the part that organized religion may play in the coming restructuring. Down through history, many of America’s most successful welfare organizations, including the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, and hundreds of denominationally affiliated hospitals, have emerged as a religious response to social crises.
In many cities and distressed areas of older industrial states, congregations of all faiths already provide an impressive array of services, including nursing, immigrant counseling, meals for the home-bound, dental care, prison ministry, homeless shelters, HIV/AIDS treatment, and programs to combat sexual trafficking. In 2008, the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation identified 2,338 separate religious programs, which would cost nearly $100 million annually to replace, in just the Kent County region of western Michigan.
May 26th, 2011 | 10:00 pm
I hesitate to listen to right wing discussions of poverty because they have such little experience with poor folk. Its obvious.
Right wing think tanks-even less experience.
So when a right wing thik tank labels tallies up the activity of religious charities with the point of saying, “See we can do without evil welfare” I am eager to hear the opinions of the leaders of these religious charities. I suspect most are not at all eager to see any substantial cut in the already parsimonious “safety net” of welfare, food stamps, public housing, medical assistance, SSI/SSD, or medicare. I suspect they are barely meeting current client demands and fear the crush of the right wing war on the poor, a seemingly acceptable form of class warfare according to Church heirarchy.
The Republican Dream seems to always involve the eager inevitability of seeing homeless families on our streets. Like the shoulder-shrugging acceptability of dead civilians as so much “collateral damage” in these wars of choice.